A couple of emails have asked why I was "hostile" to Pakistan.
But I am a strong proponent of the deportation of Altaf Hussain to stand trial in that country.
The supporters of the present Government of India have murderous intent towards me as a friend of the Dalits and as a proponent of self-determination as, on balance, the best solution to the dispute in Kashmir.
And I see a strong case for Zulfikar Ali Bhutto as the Subcontinent's greatest statesman since independence.
The circumstances of his overthrow and murder, however, serve only to illustrate my point that Britain supported the creation of Pakistan in order to ensure British and then American military bases in a highly strategic area by means of a state defined only by Islam, so that any apparent departure from a hardline Islamist identity had to be put down by the Army with strong British and American support.
For all its imperfections, for 50 years the strongest voice for an alternative vision of Pakistan has been that of the Pakistan People's Party.
Moreover, the proposed and emerging economic corridor from Gwadar and Karachi to Kashgar places Pakistan at the heart of the One Belt One Road initiative, which is one of the most exciting developments of the twenty-first century.
India, on the other hand, refuses to have anything to do with it.
I am not "hostile" to India, either, by the way. But the supporters of its present Government are extremely hostile to me, a fact in which I take great pride.
The supporters of the present Government of India have murderous intent towards me as a friend of the Dalits and as a proponent of self-determination as, on balance, the best solution to the dispute in Kashmir.
And I see a strong case for Zulfikar Ali Bhutto as the Subcontinent's greatest statesman since independence.
The circumstances of his overthrow and murder, however, serve only to illustrate my point that Britain supported the creation of Pakistan in order to ensure British and then American military bases in a highly strategic area by means of a state defined only by Islam, so that any apparent departure from a hardline Islamist identity had to be put down by the Army with strong British and American support.
For all its imperfections, for 50 years the strongest voice for an alternative vision of Pakistan has been that of the Pakistan People's Party.
Moreover, the proposed and emerging economic corridor from Gwadar and Karachi to Kashgar places Pakistan at the heart of the One Belt One Road initiative, which is one of the most exciting developments of the twenty-first century.
India, on the other hand, refuses to have anything to do with it.
I am not "hostile" to India, either, by the way. But the supporters of its present Government are extremely hostile to me, a fact in which I take great pride.
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